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No, it’s not just you — the X-MEN: APOCALYPSE timeline makes no sense.

http://screencrush.com/x-men-apocalypse-timeline-makes-no-sense/

The biggest complaint I read when the first teaser launched was that all the characters wore black and how that was boring. I agree. Superheroes can look like superheroes and still be cool in a movie.

There are some people in Hollywood getting a bit nervous. BvS was a hit but seriously underperformed. Civil War is a bigger hit but, if you look, is having weaker legs than Deadpool and may end up making less at the box office than Iron Man 3. Now the X franchise opens weak, even coming off of two pretty well regarded films.

Deadpool proved the super-hero movie is far from dead but there are a lot of big budget comic book flicks in the pipeline that will need to make $300+ million just to break even. If these things start making “only” $200 or $250 million, there will be real financial repercussions:

Mike

Fox has already said Drew’s rumor is untrue.

Thanks Chris! I just caught that a short bit ago (the perils of these reports that happen while I’m tucked away in bed). Wouldn’t be the first time a studio denied something that ended up being true though, we’ll see soon enough I’m sure!

Amazing to think it was 35 years ago that the New Mutants lineup consisted of more females than males, and only one of the team, Cannonball, was a WASP male. Try that now and the misogynist-revanchist wing of the net would never let Marvel hear the end of it.

Haha, you can’t fool me. This is “X-Men: Civil War” Or it’s just another superhero vs. superhero with a villain thrown in flick. That appears to be the theme of this year’s crop of comic book movies.

Thanks for calling it a superhero film and not a comic film. This needs to become a standard on all comic websites.

I’m not sure that a reviewer who begins by worrying about how the film fits in continuity with a scene in another film, is in touch with how most non-fans will approach it. I suspect that most moviegoers won’t remember (or if they do, they won’t care) that Reynolds played a “Deadpool” character in one of those X-films.

“Maybe the biggest issue facing the film is that it’s intended for diehards”

If that the case why are the mainstream press reviews good? (At least the ones I have read )

Peter Bradshaw who is pretty hard to please give it four stars in the guardian.

From the trailers, this looks utterly crass and cynical. Did Mark Millar write the screenplay? I ask because it looks like KICK-ASS 3.

Hello there! This post couldn’t be written any better! Looking at this article reminds me
of my previous roommate! He always kept talking about this.
I am going to send this post to him. Fairly certain he’s going to have a very good read.
I appreciate you for sharing!

Loooove. Now 2 reasons to be hyped for February!! ..the other is Toy Fair.

first we gonna
ROCK
then we gonna
ROLL
then we let it
POP
DON’T LET IT GO!

As a huge X-Men fan, I found the trailer underwhelming and — even worse — cheesy. Hopefully it’s just a poorly edited together trailer and not representative of the final film.

If you look at the present calendar:
Assuming a three year gap in production of sequels…
2019 is full. However, if Captain Marvel or Inhumans is delayed, then a Dr. Strange sequel (2016>>>2019) could be scheduled.
2020 has two possible sequels from 2017 which probably will be scheduled: Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy 3.

What does Marvel have to lose from X-TV?
Ratings. Especially as Marvel grooms the Inhumans to fill that gap in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Although, it does allow Marvel to get more shows on TV, to compete with DC which will have EIGHT series on four different networks during the 2015-16 season. (And another 8-9 in development.)

I liked the Legend series, partly for the great covers, partly because it was self-contained yet told an interesting story.

It was already debunked that Marvel got FF rights back.

I briefly worked for a trailer house in New York. They had product from every which way, but hands down the people they wanted to work with the least was Fox. Fox would return everything they made with piles of notes and requests for changes that often contradicted the last batch or one another. They executive micro-managed every last detail to oblivion.

I saw “Fantastic4″ last night, and Sucktastic4ever was not worth it…

Isn’t that a mark of today’s anti-culture, as we are consumers that pretend to be ‘Americans’ / ‘humans’, saying “…You’ll probably never see it. Thant’s reality though”? Here we are as everything is made to break down and take our money, instead of work and last, while we sit in traffic, and have our dignity chipped away so we can push ‘corporate policy’ for a paycheck that has diminishing returns on purchasing power, and the concept of making even a great movie for something like LEE/KIRBY’S Fantastic Four is more about “consumer” disappointment and wasting our money, than it is about entertainment that inspires the imagination, incites intelligent conversation, and urges the viewer to want to go out and learn more about science, being around a group of people who are different and working together to have fun and adventure, and of course -the Fantastic Four.

This goes for everyone from the people who walk around high school tracks and football fields for some charity cause to gain money and recognition for curing cancer (while companies like Monsanto have patents on genetic sequences, but will not use them as it is more profitable to treat than cure diseases, along with the congressmen they have in their pockets), to the lame corporate tools like us as we just sit in traffic, and have the nerve just to tell ourselves success is based on attitude, and ‘think positive’ (while we have no urge or idea as to how to enable cooperation and tolerance at work or in our neighborhoods, have no idea how to tell someone how to meet their city council members, how to have a peaceful non-violent protest against things like how we use gerrymandering or out-sourcing jobs instead of training Americans, or how to be involved in town hall meetings), to the ‘consumer’ that is willing to pay over $2.00 for a “comic book” that is mainly about “super heroes” band names (instead of cutting edge, and just plain quality sequential art / story telling) -Remember this when you make a decision fellow ‘Americans’, and overall Fantastic4 ticket buyers / ‘consumers’ / chumps :

Live like a consumer get treated like a ‘consumer’.

Interesting article here: the FF fiasco might put the brakes on Hollywood’s hiring of young indie directors to helm franchise movies:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/why-josh-tranks-indie-to-fantastic-four-trajectory-could-spell-doom-for-the-next-spider-man-20150807

Writer Sam Adams points out that “unnamed sources have been working diligently for months to ensure that he (Trank) shoulders the brunt of the blame. Even comic-book fans, who are normally fiercely protective of their fellow geeks, have turned on him, swarming critics who gave the film even modestly positive reviews …”

He adds that it’s “unnerving to see purported film fans with virtually no knowledge of what actually happened reflexively side with Fox and Marvel and against Trank, as if the corporation that’s already screwed up the Fantastic Four’s story multiple times is somehow blameless.”

.

Entertainment Weekly investigation into what went wrong. Looks like there’s plenty of blame to go around.

“Some who worked on the film say Trank broke, for sure, but was driven to the breaking point by the studio, and that his clash was not with Kinberg but Fox production president Emma Watts. According to several individuals who worked on the movie, the studio delayed casting and script approvals, slashed the budget by tens of millions from what was originally promised during the development phase, and tried to force last-minute script changes to the film just as principal photography was beginning.”

Sources also say that, despite everyone’s denials, Trank was fired from the movie, apparently during the editing process.

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/08/07/fantastic-four-josh-trank-tweet

Interesting article. I ultimately think the blame has to go to Fox because they let themselves get swept up in the hype. Their first FF film had some serious problems but was a good bit of fun and a modest hit. They then rushed out a sequel just two years later that fixed none of the initial problems, added some more and was a failure, though not a bomb. Instead of taking a breath and trying to make a truly good FF flick, they shelved the franchise because the tone they had created wasn’t “Nolany” enough and then tried to come back with a reboot that added even more new problems while seemingly losing any sense of fun at all.

I mean, besides the powers, in what way does this new film resemble the Fantastic Four? And don’t bring up the Ultimate version because no one in the general public even knows that book existed.

Mike

If reports of Trank’s on-set behavior are true, he bears some blame. But I think the studio bears more blame. There seems to be a concerted effort on the Internet to hold Trank solely responsible for the film’s failure — to depict the FF movie as this decade’s HEAVEN’S GATE and Trank as his generation’s Michael Cimino.

Looks like Ang Lee’s THE ICE STORM is still the best movie involving the Fantastic Four.

Thanks for bringing that piece to my attention George, I love Sam’s writing and I think he’s spot on here.

So, does anyone fave access to the script, in any incarnation, so that comparisons can be made?

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 8%, which I think makes it the worst reviewed superhero flick since the modern era began with the first X-Men.

As contrast the 1994 film that wasn’t even made to be released gets a 34%

I want to stick up for the first two Fantastic Four flicks. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both pretty terrible and butcher Dr. Doom and Galactus about as bad as anything in genre history. I will say they both have a sense of fun that I enjoyed in contrast to the EVERYTHING MUST BE SERIOUS Nolan Bat-films of the same era, even though Nolan’s movies are vastly superior.

I’ll go see the new FF because I am an idiot but it sure looks like they lost any sense of fun while simultaneously getting everything even wronger than any of the three previous attempts.

Mike

I refuse to go see this film. Everything I’ve read about it bears no resemblance to the characters and comic that I’ve loved since I was a kid. The people making excuses say that it leans more on the Ultimate version (enough to make me not want to see it) but based on what I’ve read that’s not even true. The earlier two movies (I can’t really count the Corman version which sadly is the most faithful to the FF comic) were not great. A bumbling Reed. An miscast Sue. A really poor take on Dr. Doom, who they preferred to call “Victor” mostly in both films. But there were elements that felt like the FF: Chiklis and Evans were both pretty good in there roles and there was at least some heart to the story. For some reason, people in Hollywood think that they can do it better than Jack and Stan. They haven’t proven it yet. You can tweak some of the things that Jack and Stan did but stay faithful to what they created and make a pretty awesome movie.

Allow me to say that Chiklis and Evans were good in THEIR roles.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen them, but I like the story fantastic four movies too. They have lots of faults, but at least I could recognize them as comic book characters. They were fun. I have no interest in seeing this one

I saw “Fantastic4″ last night, and Sucktastic4ever was not worth it…

Isn’t that a mark of today’s anti-culture, as we are consumers that pretend to be ‘Americans’ / ‘humans’, saying “…You’ll probably never see it. Thant’s reality though”? Here we are as everything is made to break down and take our money, instead of work and last, while we sit in traffic, and have our dignity chipped away so we can push ‘corporate policy’ for a paycheck that has diminishing returns on purchasing power, and the concept of making even a great movie for something like LEE/KIRBY’S Fantastic Four is more about “consumer” disappointment and wasting our money, than it is about entertainment that inspires the imagination, incites intelligent conversation, and urges the viewer to want to go out and learn more about science, being around a group of people who are different and working together to have fun and adventure, and of course -the Fantastic Four.

This goes for everyone from the people who walk around high school tracks and football fields for some charity cause to gain money and recognition for curing cancer (while companies like Monsanto have patents on genetic sequences, but will not use them as it is more profitable to treat than cure diseases, along with the congressmen they have in their pockets), to the lame corporate tools like us as we just sit in traffic, and have the nerve just to tell ourselves success is based on attitude, and ‘think positive’ (while we have no urge or idea as to how to enable cooperation and tolerance at work or in our neighborhoods, have no idea how to tell someone how to meet their city council members, how to have a peaceful non-violent protest against things like how we use gerrymandering or out-sourcing jobs instead of training Americans, or how to be involved in town hall meetings), to the ‘consumer’ that is willing to pay over $2.00 for a “comic book” that is mainly about “super heroes” band names (instead of cutting edge, and just plain quality sequential art / story telling) -Remember this when you make a decision fellow ‘Americans’, and overall Fantastic4 ticket buyers / ‘consumers’ / chumps :

Live like a consumer, then get treated like a ‘consumer’.
Yuuu-p, thaz riiii-ite, I said it and I’z says it agains, cuz it’s time to DRAXX THEM SKOUNST, as we treat these mammajamaz from Fox like sum kinda “terries” onz’tha wallet n $h!+ -I mean is get’n waaay too froggy, and we’z gotta be prepared to blast up on these wallet-terries know’msaynz… (youtube Key & Peele – Prepared for Terries):
Live like a consumer, then get treated like a ‘consumer’.

The buzz I’m hearing on this movie is that it’s a bad imitation of a Chris Nolan film: dark, grim, humorless and ponderous. That’s not what I want from an FF movie. As mediocre as the 2005 and 2007 movies were, they did convey a sense that having super powers could be fun. I’d like to see some of that Silver Age wackiness on the screen.

@ABB I only get half of what you wrote but “live like a consumer, then get treated like a consumer” it´s absolutely right. Lately “consumer rights” have been treated the same as “human rights”.

I wonder if somebody is already considering to accuse this film as some sort of “crime against humanity”?

“I wonder if somebody is already considering to accuse this film as some sort of “crime against humanity”?”

Wouldn’t surprise me. When fanboys feel they’ve been screwed, their rage knows no bounds. Witness their fury over BATMAN AND ROBIN and CATWOMAN.

Fortunately, Chris Nolan began directing Batman movies, so fans had movies they could rank above THE GODFATHER, CITIZEN KANE, and anything from Hitchcock or Kubrick or Scorsese.

“Witness their fury over BATMAN AND ROBIN and CATWOMAN.”

You can mock fanboys for a lot but for being upset about those two movies? You’re kind of making a mockery of yourself.

Mike

Wanna bet this will be edited for a PG-13 before it’s released?

I can’t think of an R-rated superhero movie since WATCHMEN, in 2009.

Haven’t seen Magic Mike deliver one line worth a damn. Gambit will bomb, mark my words. Fox would be better off with someone else. Tatum does not equal Jackman. Deadpool is interesting because it really is striving for something new and different. Gambit gets a big yawn from me

Tatum really has a punchable face. Maybe he’s a great guy, but he looks like someone who’s spent way too much time in the gym. In other words, someone who shouldn’t be playing Gambit. The fact he was cast as Gambit shows how “well” they’d handle the character, so we’re better off without this one, I think.

This month’s Entertainment Weekly? Really?

[…] Lumberjanes is about to become a major motion picture The Wicked + The Divine is being adapted into a television series HG Peter Wonder Woman Covers Jughead from Zdarsky and Henderson is coming this fall The Occult World Of Doctor Strange Gabrielle Bell On Her First Book Fantagraphics to publish deluxe Complete Wimmen’s Comix in September Looking for a super path: DC at the turn of the century Comics Legend Daniel Clowes on Hate Mail, Jim Belushi, and Not Forgiving Shia LaBeouf DC’s in-story ads only to destroy comics for a month…so far Lee Bermejo Draws Various Rock Stars Grumpy Cat is getting her own comic book from Dynamite A Dave McKean Series Sam Hiti is not dead, but that’s about all we know Frank Quitely Pencil Art Virgil Finlay Draws HP Lovecraft Troy Little adapting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in October Berni Wrightson ~ Apparitions Portfolio ~ 1978 Warrior’s Good Fortune […]

Moore’s expansive version of Orlando has become one of my all time favorite characters.
I hope the show does them justice.

I await a quote from a Fox executive or the new director saying that the first movie didn’t succeed because it wasn’t “funny enough” to connect with a broader audience. I wish I was kidding, but I’m seriously expecting this.

I actually prefer the movie to the comic. Never understood the hate for the movie. Each to his own I suppose!!

Is there a property that screams for the “The Avengers” treatment more than the “League of Extra-Ordinary Gentlemen”?

I mean, Warner Bros. could have led into “Justice League” with solo outings for the Big Five (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Green Lantern), but their the source material just isn’t there. There isn’t an “Ultimate DCU” that feels ready for the big screen.

LoEG, on the other hand, has terrific source material. Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neil created two great cinematic plots before they started crawling up their own backsides. Moreover, the original cast derives from some of the greatest stories of their era. How awesome would it be to see a Dracula movie in the LoEG-verse, an “Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold” in the LoEG-verse, an “Invisible Man” in the LoEG-verse, a “2,000 Leagues Under The Sea” in the LoEG-verse all leading into the culminating LoEG movie? Half of those stories get filmed once a generation ANYWAY, because they are awesome. Giving them an LoEG spin would be fun.

[…] Fox hires Josh Boone to write/direct The New Mutants […]

Id rather see a lighthearted, action packed FF movie set in the 1960’s.

I so want not to pre-judge, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this…

Who’s the target audience? It sure isn’t anyone who’s familiar the legacy series. They’ve jettisoned almost everything. The worst change? Transforming Reed Richards, one of the world’s foremost scientists, into some snot-nosed kid who looks like he’s barely out of high school. It totally ruins the generational dynamic between Johnny and the rest of the team that was part of the group’s wide appeal. Instead of being a father figure, Richards is now one of the kids, and the new father figure is Sue and Johnny’s father, who looms so large, its almost as if he’s part of the group. Why screw with a basic formula that’s worked for more than 50 years? Where’s Marvel’s brand manager? Do they even have one?

Because of Marvel’s recent film track record, this will probably do OK at the box office. But I’ll be shocked if it’s a blockbuster. My guess is it will be one of the most lackluster Marvel films in quite awhile.

Why would anyone want to watch this? It looks ponderous and generic. (And wearily literal in having bits break off the Thing.)

Is it good or bad that comic fandom seems to care so little that this movie is basically taking the FF and butchering them like super-hero flicks used to do in the bad old days? I mean, when Johnny Storm being black is the smallest deviation from the source material and few really mind?

Mike

This film is receiving massive negative feedback. Josh Trank was supposed to be at the Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim this past weekend but canceled at the last minute, apparently due to illness. He certainly dodged a bullet because it would have been his only public appearance since all the news about the FF movie hit the fan and so he didn’t have to face tough questions about his “creative” decisions. Apparently what seemed like a ridiculous internet rumor about Doctor Doom is true, which wipes this film off my slate of movies to see this summer. The handling of Doctor Doom in the previous FF films was certainly bungled, but nothing like what this film is doing. Doctor Doom has the potential of being as major a screen villain as Darth Vader if only he would be presented the way Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created him. He doesn’t need to be revamped or “improved” for modern audiences.

i certainly don’t understand the negativity about this trailer. I think it looks great. The Ultimate Fantastic Four comic was terrific and it demonstrated an excellent way to update the characters for a new generation of fans. Basing the new movie on that updated take on the characters was a smart way to go. I would love a period piece set in the 60’s (ala X-Men First Class meets Mad Men), but that is not the only way to tell stories with these characters. This movie looks like it will be a substantial upgrade to the prior FF movies.

[…] Astonishing Tales #1-4 Bruce Timm’s New Justice League Are Getting Their Own Snazzy Figures The second Fantastic Four trailer debuts the new Doctor Doom Age of Ultron Avengers Chris Sheridan FCBD Free Comic Book Day G Willow Wilson Motorcycle […]

Using the Ultimates as a model for this FF film very well could be a mistake of epic proportions. The amount of people who read Ultimates compared to the amount of people who read the legacy FF is tiny by comparison, and if this film starts strong and then dies on the vine due to word of mouth, it very likely will be a backlash of people telling their friends, “Yuck! This isn’t the FF I remember.”

Kind of like Ang Lee’s “Hulk.”

[…] next Spider-Man will be a high school aged Peter Parker What if it was true? Godzilla In Hell X-Men: Apocalypse adds another 90’s favorite as Olivia Munn is cast as Psylocke Xenu, Intergalactic Overlord, Returns to Earth Mike Marts departs Marvel for startup Aftershock […]

Burt Reynolds? Or Stan Lee?

He is my idol

I’m not exactly sure why, but I hate everything about that new Fantastic Four film. Not that the others were great, but the FF isn’t supposed to be dark and moody. That’s all I see when I look at any images from it.